Download to read offline
Uploaded byThomas King
Opening Everything
This document discusses considerations for African institutions regarding open access and open scholarship. It provides historical context on open principles in scholarship from ancient times. It then discusses the trajectory of journal publishing and the rise of open access initiatives. Key points addressed include enabling policies, infrastructure investments, and asserting academics' rights to share their work. The challenges African universities face in participating more fully in open scholarship are also examined.
More Related Content
Opening Everything
- 1. Opening Everything: Considerations forAfrican Institutions Michelle Willmers and Laura Czerniewicz CC-BY-SA
- 2. The history ofscholarship and the evolutionary progress of open academic principles
- 3. St Benedict ofNursia (480-547)
- 4.
- 5. St Hildegard ofBingen (1098-1179)
- 6.
- 9. The Trajectory ofJournal Publishing • 1655 Transactions and Journal des Savans • 17th-20th century, mostly society and independent journals, slow growth • By 1850, 100 journals • Post war, the information society provides opportunities for commercial players • Massification of universities fuels journal growth • 2011 approx. 25 000 journals • Promotions and recognition driven by industry- controlled metrics Swan 2011; McGuigan and Russell 2008; Guedon 2001.
- 10. Countervailing forces - scholarshipgoes digital
- 14. A Brief Historyof Open Everything (so far)
- 17. Budapest Open AccessInitiative (2001) An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet. The public good they make possible is the world- wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds. Removing access barriers to this literature will accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge.
- 18. Open Access Publishing GoldRoute - Primary publication in open-access journals. - 7 070 journals (DOAJ 2011) Green Route - Self-archiving of scholarly content in open access repositories prior to, in parallel with, or after publication. - 2085 repositories worldwide (DOAR 2011) http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2011/09/dramatic-growth-of-open-access.html
- 19.
- 20. Who Pays? Rise ofnew business models: ‘freemium’ and value-add
- 23.
- 25. Open Research • Replicable(transparency - method) • Reusable (results free for re-use and appropriation) • Replayable (tools available for appropriation) • Collaborative • Interdisciplinary • Granular • Immediacy factor • Suited to addressing socio-economic imperatives
- 28.
- 29. “Open access advocatesmight centre their vision on integrating open access with a new type of digital and global infrastructure that includes all results in real time … Therefore, the question that policy makers should be making is how to articulate open access as an essential part of the new infrastructure that merits institutional investment.” Chris Armbruster, Implementing Open Access (2010)
- 30. How do weparticipate (as contributors)? Factors and considerations for African universities
- 31. African HE ata glance Current est. 1 billion population Lowest tertiary enrolment rate in the world at 5% Compared to OECD targets of 50-60% and ‘Asian tiger economies’ of 30-40% Numbers of tertiary enrolments more than tripled in 20 years, imposing great strain -- 1985 (800,000 enrolments) to 2002 (3 million) 200 public universities in Sub-Saharan Africa (UK alone with 60 million population has 126 universities and over 1 million enrolments) Private tertiary providers emerging to fill demand gap and over- burden in public sector Absence of quality systems in many countries/lack of linkage between quality and national funding Materu, P., (2007), “Higher education quality assurance in sub-Saharan Africa: status, challenges, opportunities and promising practices”, A Report for the World Bank: Washington.
- 32. African Research Participation •Africa home to only 2.3% of world’s researchers • 169 researchers per one million inhabitants • Apart from having the lowest density of researchers in the world, investment in research and development in Africa stands at 0.9% • Excluding South Africa, intensity in research and development in Sub-Saharan Africa is 0.3% •Mamdani (2011): Corrosive culture of consultancy “The culture of consultancy has radically changed postgraduate education and research as consultants presume that research is all about finding answers to problems defined by a client.” Mamdani (2011) http://tinyurl.com/6czxv6e
- 33. 1. Enabling Environment •Policy, regulation and infrastructure (national and institutional). • National support for OA and acknowledgement that communication crucial part of research. • Structures and business models to enable (e.g. channels for payment of OA publication fees). • Support for changing models of scholarly communication (e.g. support for exploring Web 2.0 professional application). • Protection and control of IP in digital environment through exploration of alternative licensing options suitable to public domain (e.g. Creative Commons).
- 34. 2. e-Infrastructure • Investmentin curation - Data centres - Repositories • Investment in systems and processes to track impact • Balanced local and regional perspective • Harmonised regional collaborative approach - Grid services - Bandwidth
- 35. 3. Re-asserting Academics’Agency / The Rise of the Global Networked Scholar • Clear articulation of individual academics’ rights in sharing content. • Examination of repository deposit routes and clear articulation of expectation around author contribution (coupled with investigation to see where breakdown occurs). • Tracking and evaluation of funder’s requirements in line with institutional policy around OA. • Focus on authors as users (in addition to depositors). Armbuster C (2010) Implementing Open Access: Policy Case Studies. Max Planck Digital Library
- 37. Setidisho NOH (1978)The Role of the University in a Developing Country. Pula: Journal of African Studies 1(1): 3
- 38. Setidisho NOH (1978)The Role of the University in a Developing Country. Pula: Journal of African Studies 1(1): 4
- 39.
Editor's Notes
- #4 Father of Western monasticism. Advocates of removal of property and monastic lifestyle. Focus on immersion in reflection and reading gives birth to earliest form of Western scholarship (for the purpose of the glory of God).
- #5 Established 859 as spiritual and educational centre of Muslim world when Al-Fihri family migrated from Tunisia and joined migrant community. Sisters Fatima and Mariam inheritance led to establishment in order to serve community. Today exists as one of the oldest universities in the world.
- #6 Seer and prophet whose ill health led to utilisation of plants for therapeutic purpose. Could not read or write, but visions recorded by spiritual director and Church granted permission to share. Despite illiteracy entered into considerable correspondence across Europe helping physical/spiritual ailment. “The labours of knowledge must have public benefit.”
- #7 As many as 18 000 manuscripts, many from ancient libraries, are now housed in the Ahmed Baba Centre, named after the famous 15th century Timbuktu scholar, Ahmed Baba. he Timbuktu Manuscripts - or Mali Manuscripts - reams of written manuscripts dating as far back as the 13th century, are ancient Arabic texts that hark back to the Malian city of Timbuktu's glorious past, when it existed 500 years ago as a gold trading port and centre for academics and scholars of religion, literature and science.The manuscripts provide a written testimony to the skill of African scientists, in astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, medicine and climatology in the Middle Ages. Discourse and commentary on manuscripts dating centuries later indicate an African scholarship system that existed independent of European scholarship. [Note glossary space around text for commentary.]
- #13 “Comments” view of article. Note ‘View all corrections’. Transparency in process key.
- #14 “Metrics” view of article.
- #16 Open Source acknowledge as “Father” of the open movement, with birth in the 1950s/60s. Software produced by academics and shared as other knowledge was at the time. Source code originally distributed with hardware for self-modification until rise of software industry in late 1960s. ‘Request for Comments’ initiative to develop telecomms network protocol in 1960s led to birth of the internet in 1969.
- #20 “Free as in information, not as in beer.”
- #22 OER origins in the 1990s and formalised as movement in early 2000s. Encourages open sharing of teaching and learning content with appropriate licensing mechanisms for sharing, translation, remixing of content.
- #23 MIT OpenCourseWare as most well-known example. Offers full courses (currently 2000 available).
- #24 Portal for accessing OER from the University of Cape Town. This directory more granular approach and includes content from full textbooks to slide presentations and simulations. Launched February 2010. Currently 148 resources (October 2011).
- #25 Open Research exploring space beyond the journal article and more dynamic system of open exchange of “research objects”. Promotes expansive, collaborative approach, which has had particular success in making progress in biomedical sciences, astronomy. Most notably, led to identification of biomarkers for alzheimers.
- #26 A few commonly acknowledge characteristics.
- #27 Open research heavily contingent on open data practice.
- #28 Significant challenges and barriers to sharing open data, particularly around metadata and curation considerations. Various large-scale organisations working at global interoperability of systems and standards.
- #29 Open, technologically-driven practice leads to a new, expanded conception of impact.
- #30 Open access as one of many considerations. Infrastructure requires institutional investment.
- #32 Important to consider realities of African HE environment for foundational understanding of context in which open practice takes place for African universities. Particularly significant is teaching focus (up to new millenium), resource challenges and low number of researching academics.
- #34 Based on evidence gathered and observations of Scholarly Communication in Africa Programme and OpenUCT initiative. Outputs forthcoming.
- #35 Based on evidence gathered and observations of Scholarly Communication in Africa Programme and OpenUCT initiative. Outputs forthcoming.
- #36 Based on evidence gathered and observations of Scholarly Communication in Africa Programme and OpenUCT initiative. Outputs forthcoming.
- #37 Return to original thinking around “The Role of the University in a Developing Country” by Prof Setidisho, University of Botswana Rector, 1978.
- #38 Imperative: Address development issues.